Second intermission

The ActKM list serve this morning had a request for quotes about KM. I put this together quickly

Shawn has a good collection at Anecdote that were garnered from a variety of sources (which are in the main acknowledged so that will give you additional material to track down)

Their list of nine characteristics of KM includes three of mine (the first three so thanks Shawn!) which in their full form and origin can be found here. That posting includes the link to the 2002 article which explains them (although they date back to 1998). The first was originally Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted Shawn rephrases this as You cannot command people’s knowledge, you need to encourage them to share it which I think looses something in the translation. He references Peter Drucker’s verbal statement from an Executive retreat that he and I (plus one) under the auspices of Delphi ran back in 1998 and which I wrote down at the time In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts I have produced a variation of that recently which states that If you ask people for knowledge in the context of need, it will be granted; if you ask them to volunteer theior knowledge on the basis of an anticipated future need it will be refused.

Dave Pollard’s also has a load of stuff I would look out

I have also found the bible a very good source. Three of the ones I use a lot in KM (and innovation for that matter is) are

Matthew 9:17 Neither do people put new wine into old wineskins, or else the skins would burst, and the wine be spilled, and the skins ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.

I Corrinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known For more see here

James 2:24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified… (about which I plan to blog this Sunday

If you want some on innovation (which is one of the main objectives of KM) then see here and the current home page has material

On complexity (a key part of KM) see here

and for those facing executives who want to make KM into some glorified form of process management – the best of all from the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin

Nasrudin found a weary falcon sitting one day on his window-sill. He had never seen a bird like this before.

‘Now you look more like a bird,’ said Nasrudin.

That’s what happens to KM initiatives, people make falcons into pigeons, because they understand pigeons (and if you are the falcon its pretty painful)